Marketing is not a lifeboat to get on at the last minute in the hope that things will change in the blink of an eye. Marketing is a time-consuming process that needs to be built step by step.
Selling is closely linked to what our marketing plan is, sales are strongly influenced by how we have built our communication and branding strategy.
Selling or marketing? Is there a difference?
When a hotel wants to increase sales, the first two moves they put in place are:
- Start making revenue by relying on a specialist revenue consultant;
- Investing money for marketing and advertising;
The problem is that selling and marketing are two concepts that are often mistakenly exchanged.
For a hotelier, the fastest way to advertise is to activate a pay per click campaign on Google or Facebook.
We set the parameters of our campaign (budget, target etc …) and bring a flow of users to our website or our landing page. However, this kind of promotion only lives as long as the economic budget is inserted in the system and it stops when it is removed.
Creating a marketing strategy is a longer and more complex path that requires time and patience.
Marketing strategies start from wanting to understand customer needs in an attempt to provide a solution or to arouse a need. Marketing means trying to make your market want your product.
Choose the audience to sell to
Before selling a stay, it must be promoted. In order for the sale to be probable and efficient, it is necessary to know which audience / target segment our hotel is targeting.
- What kind of structure do I have?
- Who is my regular customer?
- What services can I promote?
- How much are you willing to spend?
- etc ..
These are just some of the questions that a hotelier should ask himself / herself together with his / her consultant before starting a marketing strategy to encourage sales.
You must always choose a segment of audience from which to be appreciated and who can be really interested in what we offer; shooting on the mass is never the best strategy.
We therefore need a series of tools and tricks that allow us to measure and understand what is the market niche that feeds our business in the most efficient and convenient way possible.
Impressions or impressions?
Now a few euros are enough to create a promotion on social networks and reach a considerable number of people. These platforms allow you to increase visibility, but are impressions really important for a hotel that wants to increase its reservations? Are impressions so determined for a marketing strategy?
Bringing lots of visits to your site isn’t necessarily a good thing if these visits don’t turn into reservations. The main cause of a non-conversion of a visit to a reservation is due to the fact that you have an audience not interested in our product who lands on our website by mistake.
Branding
A fundamental role of marketing is to make the brand grow. Through the brand you can tell the customer who you are, give yourself trust and one day he will be more willing to make a conversion.
However, if creating a sustainable and well-optimized marketing strategy is something that requires time, attention and method, building a brand requires even more.
The brand unequivocally identifies your accommodation, makes it immediately recognizable among dozens of other alternatives and makes it stand out in a unique and unequivocal way.
What does it mean to create a brand?
“Give a child a sheet of paper, some colors and ask him to draw a car, he will surely make it red”.
